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In Matsuyama
I’ve made it to the city of Matsuyama on the northwest coast of Shikoku Island. I have a few photos ready to go up, but have a lousy Internet connection. Half the city is probably using it. I spent the last couple of days in and around Hiroshima. I’ll be on Shikoku for the next […]
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Chinese Medicine and Mister Donut
I think I’m allergic to Japan. I’ve been getting worse since I got here. This morning I went to a pharmacy and between charades and a phrasebook was able to convey my symptoms. The pharmacist (well, at least he looked like a pharmacist) pulled six different medicines off the shelf and showed them all to […]
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To Kyoto on a Bullet Train
Today I hopped on the Nozomi Shinkansen, affectionately called a “bullet train,” and headed to Kyoto. Traveling by train beats the heck out of flying, especially with lots of leg-room, no body-cavity searches at the airport, and really smooth welded rail. It does make me a bit nostalgic for the old days—the clickety clack of […]
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Kyoto Day 1 and a half
I got to Kyoto yesterday. I’ll write more tomorrow. It’s been tough to find Internet access. I had a good day walking the Philosopher’s walk, but I’m totally beat. I’ve uploaded some photos, I’ll link to them tomorrow.
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Tokyo: Day Two
I spent today with another Australian, Naomi. She just finished Uni, studying GIS, and she’s spending five weeks in Japan and then going to Europe for two months. She’s been studying Japanese on and off since Grade 7, which made today easy. We went to Akihabara, which the tech-gadget capital of Tokyo, and maybe the […]
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Expectations and Surprises
The vending machines here are great. They have hot drinks as well as cold. Bottles of hot tea are 130 yen (118 yen per USD). The machines are everywhere, but nobody seems to drink anything on the street. I saw one young punk drinking tea on the subway. He must have been some kind of […]
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Tokyo: Day One
Today I went to the National Museum, which is closed on Mondays, along with everything else. This is the same reason that I have almost no photos of the inside of anything in Hanoi. I met a couple of Australians, Brian and Prue, who also failed to read their guidebook carefully. We ended up spending […]
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What time is it?
I just wanted to drop a quick note that I made it safely. The flight wasn’t as bad as I expected. The 747-400 that I was on had trouble with its Betamax player at first, but we eventually watched some movies. They apparently still make Beta tapes just for the airlines. We flew over northern […]
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Japan or Bust
I’ve decided to blow all of my vacation time at once, and I’m headed to Japan for a month from late November to late December. I’ll manage to be home for both holidays, but gone for most of the time in between. I’m pretty stoked. It looks like I’ll be able to spend quite a […]